Devlog#14 A weekend in EGLX – an experience of Canada's passion for games

By WangQian

The three days of EGLX have officially ended. I was exhausted. However, I was also completely overwhelmed by the undeniable passion, love, and support from Canadian game lovers. To my great surprise, almost everyone who stopped to check out LUNA had given us a clear thumbs up. Despite a few bug issues, receiving a mostly positive compliment like this was really unexpected, regarding how under-decorated our stand was - no divider boards, not enough flyers to hand over, and no wall to hang the only one poster we had (which was given away at the end to a game poster collector).

But thank God the people who came to the show really didn’t bother too much about those decorations. There was a lot of people who stopped and tried our latest demo throughout the three-day event. From couples to families, from the elderly to the youngsters. The youngest player who had completed the demo properly was only 5 or 6 years old. It was really nice to see the diversity of our potential players cover such big age gaps.

Also, it was totally worth the hard work when you see the story, the gameplay, the plot and the music really moving and affecting your player the way you designed for. Seeing their first-hand expression while playing was truly rewarding as a game developer.

We had a wall painting level (included in the free demo, which you can try from our website now) that brought out the most from people. It is designed to be an enchanting moment, we know it, but still when you see those vivid, excited eyes, raised eyebrows, opened mouths, you finally know that the design has worked. Yes. The artwork and music, together with the characters' animation performance, have come together as a whole, delivering a story that doesn't have any dialogues.

Of course, many pieces of advice and suggestions have been given to us gorgeously by the players, and that's the other great outcome from attending a game expo, the valuable feedback which will only make LUNA better.

We have also had the chance to expose ourselves to the games industry media people. Even though the show was finished and the computers were about to be switched off, sadly I didn't get a chance to let them play the demo at that time, but by their reaction from watching LUNA's trailer, I could still tell that this short piece of LUNA had delivered something out. One of the girls was holding back tears, I don't know what it was. Maybe it was the dramatic ending, the music or it had reminded her of something else...

There was a little Asian girl who had been waiting for about a whole hour just to try the demo. While waiting she had already seen the tricks and clues worked out by others many times, however, when finally was her turn, she still played the whole demo from the beginning towards the end, and didn't skip a single level. In the end, she came and hugged me with joy when she finished. This might be my most memorable moment of the whole event.

We were proud to let people know that our little team came from China. All over the world, game lovers, indies or not, are doing what they love, everywhere. Next month Betty will be attending UK's INSOMNIA 62 game show in Birmingham, so we hopefully see more of you there!

Games connect people. We make games. How wonderful is that?

Devlog #11 Classic or Cliché?

Current Progress Overview

During the past 2 months we’ve got 4 more mock up levels developed, including one of the outdoor levels as our adventure mostly takes part inside the tower, which can be bit restricting. We have also been working on another cinematic cut-scene which has (spoiler alert) a new mystery character in it who might play an important role in the story.

                                                              screenshots from some of the mock up levels

                                                                                         the stories from the past...

We are now aiming to finish all mock up game levels by the end of this year, then focus on polishing the art and remaining features programming from early next year. 

Also during the last weekend we participated in the 2017 Weplay game exhibition in Shanghai, China. Quite a few people experienced our latest version of game and we received some great feedback (and bug reports of course). Thank you all for coming!

 

Classic or Cliché?

Now, here are some dev thought + design challenges we’d like to share with you. When we're frustrated and feel some design is heading towards a dead end, our friends and family always comfort us by saying: one door closes but a window will open, don't give up! But during Halloween we might say: if this happens, your house is probably haunted! 

During our game play development, there has been an issue we always seem to be struggling with:  When does a puzzle routine become Classic or Cliché? 

In the early developing days, we were deliberately trying to avoid the puzzle routines which can be found in most puzzle games in order to achieve a higher overall level of uniqueness. It worked for a couple of levels and did give people a wow factor, but then during the further game tests we realized this could develop into a new issue: once players figure out the logic behind, it becomes very fun and challenging to play, but if the logic is too exclusive, has no continuity with the previous level, or is simply by its own and totally isolated from the story, in another word, just trying to be clever, then most of the players will find it less enjoyable and don't feel the sense of achievement we hoped for. 

So we relooked some of the ideas we once put aside just because we thought they were not original enough, re-valued the design and took out the core goodness of it, analyzed why people enjoy these type of puzzles over and over, and why some continue to give us a fresh feeling but some failed. It also reminded us to re-play some of our favorite games and pick up which one element that touches us the most from it.

We realized that it's really down to how one puzzle design plays along with your game's atmosphere and storyline. The logic tricks could be so clever but if that has nothing to do with the development of the story, it could be dull or leave people confused. 

Here is one example: 
As some of you might remember one of the very interesting puzzles from Samorost 3, the one that you need to arrange the cards in the little box to complete a story.

                                                                The Mushroom picker's puzzle from Samorost3

It was no doubt many people’s favorite puzzle in the game, it was very neatly designed, easy to understand, yet quite challenging (it's not a short progress) but you never felt a dull moment because even by making the wrong choice, you still get to see some super fun animation showing random results. However, we find it’s a shame that such a brilliantly designed puzzle had almost nothing to do with the storyline whatsoever! It was so isolated from the whole thing that it left us a bit disappointed. Otherwise it may be an unlimited puzzle design people could look up to all the time!

So after all these adjustments, we picked back some ideas we previously threw away and looked for a good place for them again in LUNA. These include: a music puzzle, a cooking challenge and two maze designs. We wish they will appear to be some familiar elements to puzzle game lovers but will still have LUNA’s own twist, as we tried to blend them more into the environment and story. Have we achieved what we expected? That will need more tests to tell.

                                                                     design sketch of the cooking puzzle in LUNA

Devlog #10 Artwork optimization, Admin work & New designs sneak peek

It has been a while since our last update, dated by the end of May, which sounds almost like 3 months ago. So it's really about time to share some news of the game with everyone again!
 

Game reconstruction updates

We have made great progress on the code rebuild, 85% of the existing code has been rebuilt, which includes another 3 extra new levels that we haven’t fully tested yet. Also we’re still busy working on preparing the Alpha Demo ( for exclusive backers ). It is going to delay a bit ( at first we thought we could have it released by this month), and this is due to the extra time we need to apply for debugging and testing before we send it out to the players. As a very small team, we can honestly say that we are lacking of almost everything, including game testers but we are tying our best to get help from everywhere we can. It's a bit slow, we know, but never does a day goes by without us working on LUNA.  
 

Artwork optimization

Game development takes time, and as time goes by, some of the old graphics in the game might have looked good enough by then, but as we learn and grow, as the game gets proper, you can’t help to think “it’s not good enough now and it needs replacement to match the new quality”. But if we continue replacing everything all the time like the ship of Theseus, the game will take forever to finish, so we are still trying to keep a balance. And here is one updated graphic comparison from before and now.

                                                                          A shadow crow animation. Before & After.

Admin work, marketing meetings & other “I have no idea” stuff

To be honest these are sometimes the hardest parts in indie life because they have almost nothing to do with game development, and we’re all newbs when it comes to “terms and conditions”, “marketing strategy”, “legal knowledge”... stuff like that. But sadly this is also an important part that goes along with game development. 

During the past few months, we’ve been busy arranging meetings with some potential publishers and media, in order to help us find out what’s the best way for LUNA to be introduced to market in the future. Recently we’ve been given a chance to broadcast our game on a live stream in the popular Chinese gaming website VG Time, as well as taking part in the ChinaJoy games festival. In the future we will also be preparing in advance for attending game festivals like GDC, PAX, TGS and game competitions such as SXSW etc. 

Additionally, by sharing problems and struggles with people in the game market, it has also helped us gain a broader view of the indie game market. This has and will continue to affect certain decisions during the game production, such as adjusting the length and difficulty of the game. 

All these preparations will eventually take up some game dev time, but it is needed and even crucial in the long term.  
 

New level designs sneak peek

Back to the more important things, we are also working on some new level designs. These are the precious happy times which really make us feel rewarded as indie game developers. So less talk, more pictures. Here are some graphics from some of the new levels that we really like, and hopefully they will be enjoyed by players later. 

                    More information about space, dimension and background story to be revealed soon

Devlog #9 Unity Event, Sound Design & Game Reconstruction Updates

One year ago, we launched our game  campaign. Since then, both LUNA and Lantern Studio have grown so much and became something more than we thought we could be! We surely could not have reached where we are now without all our lovely supporters. As we will be continuously working hard on LUNA, we’d like to say thank you again for being incredibly patient and understanding. Thank you for all the warm support we've received during the past year!

It has been a while since our last update, so here are the things we’ve been working on during these days.

Unity - Unite 2017 Shanghai

This month our team attended this great event where more than 4000 game developers could gather together, to meet up with the Unity experts and industry leaders to explore some of the new creative potential of the Unity engine.

We also met a lot of other local indie game teams during the event, shared our experiences and the challenges faced during the game development process and, last but not least, had a good peek at what other great new indie games are under development at the moment, and hopefully in the future we could give each other more help and support.

We have been introduced to a lot of exciting new technologies for the Unity engine by the Unity dev team, don’t wanna bore everyone with too much tech terms, but for example we’re thinking about using the new Unity Analytics tools for our upcoming Alpha demo, which could help us get the best of all the feedback and data received from the players in order to bring out the best gameplay experience.

Sound Design

It’s time for sound FX to be professionally designed and modified into our game. Together with our game reconstruction, we are now switching to a more effective way for our sound designer to work more closely with the level development. By using the FMOD sound engine, now the interactive parts of the level and its sound design / editing can synchronise much better than before.

Game Reconstruction Updates

Half of the existing levels’ reconstruction work have been completed. According to the plan, there will be 7 levels which is about 25-30% of the whole game content included in our Alpha release. We should be able to give a bit more information about it in our next update, so stay tuned guys!
 

Devlog #6 Refinements Results & SHCC

Refinements Results 

Walking cycle

The walking cycle is usually the most basic and also the most difficult animation to deal with. We realized the jumping/jerky issues of our boy character’s walking cycle is due to his quite dramatic up-and-down movement and big step. So we retouched the animation by referencing more game characters' walking cycles instead of the traditional cartoon/animation movement. The new walking cycle by its own might seems less exciting than before, but once it's been placed in the game environment, it turns out to be a lot smoother and pleasant to look at. 

 Also we realized the camera movement in some of the levels would magnify this jerky issue. More research will have to be put into fixing this issue later on.

Art material size optimization

The build of our game is getting bigger everyday, and this could be worrying. No player would like to experience crashing before even starting the game. So the earlier we start looking into this problem the better. It’s tricky to want to maintain the hand drawn/organic feel of the game's art without using big chunks of background drawings. So, this month we chose one of the new levels we are developing, and tried to find a balance between using seamless and original textures for building the background. We are also trying to get the color effect right by using multiply layers with blending adjustment in Unity. There will be more challenges to take, but the first attempt turned out lot better than we expected. (see image below)

                                                 Before (left) & After (right) Optimization

SHCC

Last weekend we’ve been invited to Shanghai Comic Con to showcase LUNA (with 2 new demo levels added) along with many other great indie game teams. For all the people who came around to say hi and left us great suggestions, we really appreciated all your support! Hope in the future we will have more chances to bring LUNA to other game show exhibitions in different countries.

                                           Had our first time exhibition stands design experience in SHCC

For the new month, we are planning to start the development of a new level next month. The gameplay we designed for this level will give us quite a few technical challenges as it involves quite a lot study about the physics of shadow movement. Also, players could expect to experience some good old action gameplay mixed within the puzzles.